Search

yeah, the privacy stuff, interesting reading hunh?

We do not, and will never, sell, trade, rent or loan your personal information to others, unless instructed by a court of law, and then, frankly, it may well be the least of your troubles.

There are three methods your personal information is collected: 1. your personal information submitted on the contact form, ie, name and email address; 2, the use of tracking software; and, 3, the use of a program to assist in social media sharing of the site.

No information is collected or retained if you choose to donate. Any financial transaction is conducted on the super secure Paypal site, if hackers crack that the whole world is in trouble.

1. Your name or email address is not saved by the site contact form itself, ie, there’s no record kept on the site database of your name, email address or message.

Your name and email address does, of course, appear on the contact form email, err, so I can reply. Your email is sent to a dedicated email account, using the Thunderbird email client, and retained, as is any reply. At some point you may receive an email alert to an eventual book release. Thunderbird is as secure as any Mac based email accounts, ie, generally spam free.

2. There is an abundance of tracking software aboard, mostly replicating functions: a basic log as part of the Textpattern program used to create the website; Google Analytics; and a program Mint.

Google Analytics, a free web analytics service provided by Google, uses “cookies”, which are text files placed on your computer, to help the website analyse how users use the site. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) is transmitted to and stored by Google on servers in the United States and retained, being Google, forever. The retained information is extensive, including: browser, average visit duration, pages per visit, traffic sources, site speed, country and city of user, etc.

Google Analytics is used because of some useful aggregators, eg, a world map showing the location of the users of the site. At 1 July 2013 there have been almost 200k hits from almost 32k users from 132 countries and 4,907 cities. It was through Google that I discovered the first person to look at 100+ pages in one sitting was located in Nuuk, that’s in Greenland in case you didn’t know. Most hits are from Australia, unsurprisingly, but the Dutch, Germans and NZers tend to look at more pages per visit on average.

This website also uses Mint a web analytics service provided by HaveaMint.com, which also uses “cookies”. The information generated by the cookie about your use of the website (including your IP address) are transmitted to and stored by cycletrailsaustralia.com for one month on servers in the United States. The retained information is extensive, similar in scope to Google but presented in a more compact form.

Mint was initiated prior to Google Analytics became available but it has the advantage as being an easy to read hit aggregator, counting visits on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis. For your interest, there are around 10,000 hits a month, Sunday and Monday is the busiest time, Friday, I guess people have other things to do. It’s helpful in showing what aspect of the site interests people and I have modified the site accordingly. I have been keeping an eye on the “real estate” aggregator which shows that 4% of users are accessing the site via a phone sized screen and the time is quickly coming around to the need to make the website more mobile friendly.

There’s a bit of site tuning motivation with the trackers but in truth it’s as much pure vanity, ie, oh, people are still looking at the site.

If you are at all worried by these revelations take a look at other privacy policies: Fairfax, one of the biggest sites in Australia basically says, we will use your personal information in any way we can make money.

That ain’t happening here. There’s not even ads.

3. This website also uses ShareThis, a free social bookmarking and sharing tool provided by ShareThis.com, which also uses “cookies”, but only if you use the social media buttons. All tracking is done by ShareThis, no information is retained in the cycletrailsAustralia.com website database. Refer to the ShareThis privacy policy.

cycletrailsAustralia.com contains links to other websites, mostly found on the links page. We are not responsible for information on, or the privacy practices of, those other websites.